Word: strontium
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...public's dread centers on the radioactive elements that remain in spent fuel rods after atomic reactions. While such highly toxic fission products as strontium 90 and cesium 137 have half-lives of only about 30 years, other intensely radioactive substances like plutonium will endure for tens and even hundreds of millenniums, and are piling up fast. High-level waste -- that which is most radioactive -- from U.S. power plants is not voluminous. More than 30 years' worth totals 17,000 tons, a thimbleful compared with the slag that would result from generating equivalent power by burning coal. Yet this waste...
...freaky accidents and dangerous pollution, and 75 FBI agents are currently there looking for proof of fraud in the disposal and incineration of plutonium-laden wastes. But what has environmental officials most puzzled is something they never expected to find even at trouble-prone Rocky Flats: traces of radioactive strontium and cesium that a nuclear chain reaction could produce -- even though there is no nuclear reactor at the site. The Environmental Protection Agency has demanded a study to determine how the mysterious isotopes got to Rocky Flats...
...lock and a key, and only the right key will fit to initiate a given reaction. In essence, the trio managed to create synthetic molecular keys that fit the locks as well. Those new molecules have been used experimentally to partially detoxify rats contaminated with lead or radioactive strontium...
...more wild thinking. Chu reasoned that the high pressure worked because it squashed the compound's molecular structure and that this somehow boosted its superconducting temperature. Since more pressure did no good, Chu decided to compress the molecules in a different way -- from within. He replaced the barium with strontium, which is similar chemically but has a smaller atomic structure. Sure enough, the temperature rose again, to 54 K, then stopped. So he turned to calcium, an element with even smaller atoms. This time the temperature dropped. It appeared to be a dead...
...damage to the earth around Chernobyl was probably equally severe. Up to 60 sq. mi. of Soviet farmland is likely to remain severely contaminated for decades, unless steps are taken to remove the tainted topsoil. Reason: cesium 137 and strontium 90, two radioactive particles spewed by the blaze, decay very slowly. It could take decades for the ground to be free of them. Together with the shorter-lived iodine 131, the substances promise to pose short- and long-term problems for people, crops and animals. Says James Warf, a chemistry professor at the University of Southern California: "I wouldn...